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Move or be Moved

So much of this blog is dedicated to the questions. Far too often it feels as though we rely on things to make sense when really the inquiry, and a willingness to truly look, is what counts the most. As I said in a previous post—not so eloquently—is the honest-to-God truth that as an evolving people living in an ever-changing world, we try our very hardest to make our lives and all its components, stationary, unmoving, and permanent. Oh, brother. I say, A for effort but surely, we will fail.

And fail we should. Because why shouldn’t we? From the time we are born life moves us and MAN is it something. It both shatters and builds us up—a paradox that, at our very best, is worth trying to embrace. I’ve always found it ironic that we celebrate the milestones of our life by marking and signifying change but in the back of our minds, we dread the graduation, we dread the year we hit that crazy age, and we dread the comfort of leaving what we know behind. My response and inquiry to that is, when did we ever really know anything? Was there ever a time when we knew what each day brought and never wavered? Or did we simply convince ourselves that we existed in such a space? I think the craziest and most hopeful part of us did, but the other half understood that we never really had much choice.

Life moves us. So we damn well need to learn to move with it. I surf, very poorly, the I-can-stand-up-on-my-board-if-I’m lucky kind of surfer. But I always marvel at the ocean’s analogous nature. I think that I mostly try and fail at surfing just to feel the sheer power of the waves— to just do it—because if ever I find my two feet on a board, with a wave beneath me, getting (albeit, uncontrollably) pushed along, I’m always reminded of how lucky I am just to be here. How lucky am I to just bemoved? And then, as I manage to ride this wall of water, to be able to move myself in return.

So no, at times I don’t want the questions. Many days I just want answers, and although I can form some sort of solution from the assemblage of mismatched nuts and bolts that life provides, I start to realize that in my quest to make sense of things I am missing the point. Surely we know that we’ll find those answers, we always do; it takes the questions—the shape-shifting, moving, powerful wall of water to propel us in any which way that offers a kernel more about ourself and the process of getting there that makes those answers even remotely worthwhile. From the inside out, life moves us. And although I relearn this lesson every single day, we only ever have this choice to make: move, or be moved.